There’s a legend telling that before you were born the gods tie red threads around your ankle, connecting you to everyone you’ll ever meet in your life. Others say that at the end of that thread is your soulmate, so as you get older the length between you and your destined grows shorter and shorter until it disappears entirely.

When I was little my mother used to tell me that story. She said it was how she’d met my father, how her parents met each other, and how my father’s parents met each other. She said that it was how I, too, would meet my one true love.

Of course, I didn’t believe her. People in my generation don’t believe in old fairy tales. We prefer that they keep to fictional novels and drama shows. We like to think our lives are our own, that no gods control our fate.

I often wonder how this story came to be. Who would’ve imagined that everyone was tied together by billions of red threads? And who would’ve guessed that someone was waiting for them on the other end?

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I remember the day I met you. We almost didn’t meet.

It was January and there was a horrible ice storm that hit the city of Beijing around noon. Everyone hoped it would let up by nighttime, but it didn’t stop until the next morning. Most people had gone home early that evening, others stayed indoors to avoid getting frostbitten. My boss didn’t like the weather outside, so he went home early, but he made everyone else work until regular closing.

Working part-time in an office means that you don’t have much control over your life. Your boss is like your god, the one who lords over you, determining where you work, when you work, and what you do. Although I’d vowed to myself and my mother that I was going to take control of my own life, I’d found that I was one in a million kids like me who’d thought they were going to do something great.

Evidently, there was nothing special about me at all.

I was your average Beijing girl. Every day I wore the same type of office attire: a grey vest over a white blouse, a tube skirt with a small slit in the back, black high heels. Against my mother’s wishes I’d cropped my hair short after high school, now sporting a shoulder length bob.

My mother wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer, the stereotypical careers that Chinese parents want for their kids. But when I’d graduated university the biggest industry was business, so naturally I wanted in.

But landing yourself an office job that will likely be your first and last is not ideal. I had plans to get out of it, believe me. I wanted to save up some to get to higher education, maybe becoming an entrepreneur myself. Some of the guys in my graduating class had already gotten better jobs, hopping into agriculture or manufacturing businesses.

I would talk to my co-workers on our breaks about the things we wanted to do. Up on the rooftop of our building and away from the boss, we would smoke and lay out our dreams. One guy wanted to start a pawn shop. One woman wanted to become a singer. I wanted to go into architecture, but I’d have to go back to school for that.

Usually my co-workers and I chatted nonstop, but on the day of the snowstorm no one wanted to talk to each other, and if they did it was nothing but complaints toward the boss about not getting to leave early.

It was close to midnight when I finally left. The buses and trains had all been delayed, so some of us had chosen to stay even later, catching up on other work and hanging out to pass the time.

I put on my black winter jacket and switched out my heels for a pair of thick knee-high boots. Some other employees from the floor above us waited downstairs in the lobby on the phone to get a taxi. I doubted any cars would be running in this weather, though. I went to stand with them, pressing my forehead against the glass wall looking outside. It was a whiteout; I could only just make out the lights in the building across the road.

One of my co-workers who’d unfortunately worn heels to the office stumbled her way out the door, almost bowled over by the wind. Her heels sank deep in the snow as she tried to cross the street. I could just imagine her cursing as the wind nipped at her skin. I felt bad when she slipped and fell off the sidewalk, but there was no way I was braving the blizzard to help unless I had to.

The schedules online said my bus was delayed for another hour, though I only lived a thirty-minute walk away. It was then when my mother called, demanding to know if I was home safely. I didn’t live with her anymore, but she often called to check in on me, usually nagging that I wasn’t eating properly and should come visit her and my father.

I firmly told her I was fine, and that I was on my way back. I promised I’d be home within the hour, and that I’d call her when I got home. She was only half satisfied with my response, but I hung up before she could say anything else.

Sighing, I mapped out my route home in my head. I knew this part of the city like the back of my hand, so it was pretty easy. Unfortunately, the route I planned meant I’d have to cross this sketchy alley where no one ever went. There were rumours from the locals that people went there to dump their pets when they didn’t want them anymore. More often than not the shops along that alley found mangled and malnourished cats and dogs eating our of their garbage bins.

I’d only entered the alley once. It had been a dare from one of my high school classmates. In my memory it was a dark and disturbing place, smelling of animal crap and vomit and anything else you’d fine in the wastebins of bars and butcher shops. Back then I’d only made it halfway through, chickening out when I saw a dead dog being eaten by maggots.

There weren’t any other routes that could get me home faster. My mother was going to call me back in another forty-five minutes, and there’d be hell to pay if she found out I hadn’t gotten home safely yet. Best to leave now, I thought.

Bracing myself, I pushed open the door of my office building and went outside.